


like waves and particles of light

by brella



Category: Hyouka & Kotenbu Series
Genre: Breaking Up & Making Up, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Five Years Later, Flashbacks, Locked In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21870436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: “Talking will keep us warm, Mayaka,” he tells her gently. “Even if it’s about nothing… can’t we try?”Mayaka bites the inside of her cheek until pain throbs out to her gums. She wants to shout back, so that their whole town hears it,Haven’t I tried enough for you, Fuku-chan?“Fine,” she mutters instead. “We can try.”Mayaka and Satoshi find themselves locked in a toolshed. They find themselves some other things, too, long-buried.
Relationships: Chitanda Eru & Ibara Mayaka, Fukube Satoshi/Ibara Mayaka, Ibara Mayaka & Oreki Houtarou
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	like waves and particles of light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [petaldancing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/petaldancing/gifts).



> Happy holidays, petaldancing! Reading your letter, and reading about what _Hyouka_ means to you, touched me very deeply. I hope this measures up even a little bit to the warm feelings you have for this remarkable little series, which are feelings that I share.

Mayaka spits out the words with venom that would put a scorpion to shame. “This is _your_ fault, Fuku-chan.” 

Her breath steams up in the frigid air in front of her, like her anger has a heat. It’s nearly too dark to make out Satoshi’s face, but she knows it well enough that even the vaguest shifting shadow tells her that it’s shocked and wounded by her blame. 

“My fault?” he exclaims, but he doesn’t deny it. “That’s—I—I’m sorry, Mayaka…” 

Mayaka hits him in the arm; his wince doesn’t make her feel much better. “Sorry isn’t going to get us out of here! You can apologize to me later, and you’d _better_ make it good!” 

_Here_ , of course, is the toolshed at the shrine. Mayaka could laugh—a furious, hysterical laugh, like air out of a tire: _haaaaaa_ —if it weren’t Satoshi in here with her, who she’s made a concentrated effort to see as little as possible in the three years since their high school graduation. She could laugh, because hadn’t it been in their first year at Kamiyama High that Oreki and Chitanda had gotten themselves locked in here, too? She could laugh, because it’s got to be 0°C in here; it’s got to be cold enough that her bones are going to break. She could laugh. She could really, really laugh. 

Satoshi passes her to inspect the wooden door, closing one hand over the handle and running the other along the planks as if to find some secret button to press. Mayaka stays where she is, her hands crammed into her armpits, hunched over from the cold, gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering. 

“It won’t budge,” Satoshi says, defeated, as if Mayaka couldn’t have told him this. “I could break it down, but…” 

“Chii-chan would be upset,” Mayaka mutters stiffly. “And you’re not strong enough anyway.” 

Satoshi hangs his head. “Ah… if only weight-training were a component of an Accounting degree…” 

He sounds so—so much like Satoshi that Mayaka could hit him all over again, harder this time, but she restrains herself. She reaches one shivering arm back to fish her phone out of her jeans, and then remembers that she’d left her phone in her purse back at the shrine. 

“I don’t have my phone,” she mumbles. 

Satoshi turns his head, still hard to see, but her eyes are adjusting. “I brought mine. Let me see…” When he pulls it from his letter jacket pocket and clicks it on, it illuminates his face in blue light, casting indistinct shadows at the edges of his cheeks. “No signal.” 

“Figures.” Mayaka sighs, watching the cloud that it makes, and rubs her hands together. “Well… that’s it, then. Looks like we’re freezing to death.” 

“Mayaka,” Satoshi says chidingly, which is the third thing, now, that Mayaka kind of wants to hit him for. He pockets his phone again. “We can’t give up _that_ easily. Let’s think. What would Houtarou do?” 

Mayaka remembers well the ingenious solution that Houtarou had concocted to free himself and Chitanda from this situation all those years ago—the bit with the purse, and the special kind of knot-tying that had pertained to whatever nerdy historical drama he and Satoshi had been simul-watching—but a fat lot of good that’ll do them now, after eleven o’clock at night, a whole day before New Year’s Eve, when there’s no one around at all. 

“You think I want to spend even a second trying to get into that slug’s head?” Mayaka snaps, and smacks her cheeks to try to shock some sensation back into her face. “No, you’re right. You’re right.” She narrows her eyes when she sees him brighten a little above her. “Don’t respond to that.” 

“I didn’t hear a thing,” Satoshi says mildly, miming a motion for a zipper over his lips. 

Mayaka resents that her eyes linger there, resents that her next breath emerges a little warmer. She slumps back against the shelf with a groan and tries to think. 

Nothing of substance comes. She only realizes that Satoshi has moved to stand beside her when the empty space at her right arm tenses with the presence of him. When she looks up, she sees his face in profile in the dark, his eyelashes faintly visible only for their natural lightness, smiling ruefully at the opposite wall, somewhere near the watering can. 

“What a mess,” he says, with the kind if airy good humor that he refers to most messes. 

“Tell me about it,” Mayaka grumbles. 

Satoshi hums, a little melodic. He’d been smart enough to put on his scarf and coat, while Mayaka had left hers in the shrine, certain that she’d only be out retrieving supplies for Chitanda’s sake for a minute or two at most. What she wouldn’t give for even her scarf right about now. 

“Well,” he says, “how do you suggest we pass the time? While we think, I mean.” 

“Thinking,” Mayaka retorts. “In silence.” 

Satoshi laughs, but Mayaka knows this laugh; she knows that it’s all hollow inside, despite the bright colors. 

“Talking will keep us warm, Mayaka,” he tells her gently. “Even if it’s about nothing… can’t we try?” 

Mayaka bites the inside of her cheek until pain throbs out to her gums. She wants to shout back, so that their whole town hears it, _Haven’t I tried enough for you, Fuku-chan?_

“Fine,” she mutters instead. “We can try.” 

* * *

“What are you looking at, slug?” 

Across the table of the Geography prep room, in the late afternoon sun, Oreki affects an air of his usual disinterest and pretends to go back to reading his thin and boring-looking volume on beluga whales. Mayaka, who had been busy a moment ago going over the proofs for the month’s _Hyouka_ before Oreki had so rudely interrupted her by staring, narrows her eyes to slits. 

“Your silence will cost you,” she says, looming across the table toward him until she’s practically horizontal. 

Oreki raises his eyebrows for a moment—he’s gotten so expressive since middle school, and even since their first year; she hates it—before turning a page. 

“My mind was just wandering.” 

“Trespassers will be prosecuted,” Mayaka hisses, leveling her red pen at him the way she’d brandish a switchblade, if she had one, or wanted one, or had ever held one in her life. It’s an approximation. She has a future mangaka’s imagination. “You had a stupid look on your face just now.” 

“What else is new, by your standards?” 

He’s learned to talk back, too, since middle school, and since their first year. Mayaka might hate that more than the expressions. 

“Fine, then, don’t tell me,” she says haughtily, dropping back into her chair. 

It’s just the two of them in the clubroom; Chitanda’s at a family event and Satoshi has Sewing Club, since it’s a Wednesday. Mayaka would rather spend the time with the potted cactus, but Oreki doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. 

“There’s just something on my mind,” Oreki says, right when Mayaka’s getting back into the swing of editing. 

She slams her pen down. “Shut up. I’m working.” 

“Of course,” Oreki says dryly, turning another page. He has his chin propped up by one hand, the knuckles digging into his soft cheek. “Forgive me.” 

Mayaka glares at him, stares down at the page in front of her for a second, and then glares at him again. 

“Okay, fine. What? Spit it out.” 

“You aren’t going to like it.”

“When have I _ever_ liked it when you think?” 

“True.” Oreki yawns. “This is our last year, isn’t it?” 

Mayaka furrows her eyebrows. 

“Well, yeah,” she says. “Did you only just realize?” 

“No. I just wanted to confirm that _you_ realize.” 

“Don’t talk in circles. It’s one of your worst habits.” 

“Thank you,” Oreki drones. “Not that it’s my business, but… Chitanda’s been worrying about you and Satoshi.” 

Of course Chitanda’s at the root of this. Mayaka should have known better than to expect Oreki would have been initiating a human interaction of any kind on his own behalf. 

“You don’t have to tell me anything, of course,” he goes on. “In fact, I’d prefer it if you didn’t. But maybe you should talk to Chitanda, instead of avoiding the topic.” 

Mayaka has not been avoiding the topic! Sure, when Chitanda tries (unsubtly, Mayaka might add) to wiggle Satoshi’s name into their conversations about bullet journaling strategies, she will answer with a fact about bullet journaling—and sure, when they’d been walking to school yesterday morning and Chitanda had brought up second buttons, and Satoshi’s second button, Mayaka had started walking a little faster—but that isn’t _avoiding the topic_. 

The ugly and unfortunate truth is that Mayaka and Satoshi had dated for a year or so and then broken up. Less than a month ago, no less. Mayaka tries not to dwell on it—tries not to replay that conversation they’d had by the side of the road, under the maple tree, at sunset—and often fails. They’re still friends, more or less; they tread around each other with a measure of pain and caution, sure, like they’re trying to keep the weight off of a sprained ankle, but they’re friends. And Mayaka’s grateful for that, at least. Probably. Maybe.

“You were right,” she snaps. “It’s _not_ your business. Fuku-chan and I are the same as we’ve ever been, and that’s that.” 

Oreki contemplates this, reaching for his bookmark and slotting it between the pages. A second later, the clock ticks to six o’clock. 

“Right,” he says, standing and shouldering his bag. “That’s that. Good night, Ibara.” 

“Good night, O- _re_ -ki!” Mayaka sneers to his back, holding the last syllable with bared teeth long after he’s slid the door shut. 

Their last year. Maybe a part of her had realized, and maybe a part of her hadn’t. After this, she’ll be in a tiny apartment in Bunkyo, studying Literature—and Satoshi will still be here in Kamiyama, at the community college; so will Chitanda, and Oreki. She’s the only one leaving home, at least for now. It’s a heavy burden to bear, in its way. 

She flips her pen idly between her fingers. She wants to draw, but she has proofs and homework and chores. She settles for doodling a flower in the margins of her notebook, and stays in the clubroom until the sun has gone down. 

* * *

“So?” Mayaka asks impatiently. “What do you want to talk about?” 

At her side, Satoshi inclines his head a bit closer, but his eyes don’t follow. His mouth is still teased up with that stupid counterfeit smile, which hurts to look at. He lifts his chin a little and breathes out, audibly, open-mouthed, watching the shape that the cloud makes. 

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” he admits. “How’s Tokyo?” 

Mayaka glares at his right sneaker. “Crowded,” she says after a second, “and noisy. And bright. And too big.” 

Satoshi chuffs out a noise of amusement. “Well, _that_ doesn’t sound like the kind of thing they’d put on the tourism site. You don’t like it?” 

“I don’t know. I like my apartment and the walk to school, and my roommate’s not so bad. And there’s a—a bookstore that I like. With a cat.” She shakes her head, already resentful of having given him even those meager pieces of her life away from Kamiyama, away from him. “A-Anyway—what about you?” 

“Me?” Satoshi parrots innocently. “What about me?” 

Mayaka lightly shoves his shoulder with her own. That’s all it takes. 

“Not that different,” he says, ostensibly cheerful, but Mayaka senses the ruefulness in it. “You know this town. There’s nothing compelling it to change, so why would it?” 

“Good question,” Mayaka mutters, not even sure if they’re talking about the town anymore. 

The quiet in the shed is a kind of taut, brittle thing, frozen over so that one rough blow could shatter it to pieces. Mayaka crouches down to hunch around her knees, in the hopes that it will hold some warmth in; she grazes the dirt floor with her fingers. It’s hard with frost. 

Through a splintered hole in one of the wooden walls, she can see some of the light outside the door, a kind of shapeless, tired glow; not quite orange, but a recollection of it. She wedges her hands against her stomach, the muscles of her fingers stodgy with cold. A shiver passes through her, from the skull down. 

“Any good manga to read these days?” Satoshi asks, like they’re chatting about it over coffee. 

“There’s always good manga to read,” Mayaka snaps. She’s irritable enough as it is, but manga’s a bit of a sore spot for her these days. “You don’t need me to tell you where to find it.” 

“Ah… you’re probably right,” he replies, all demure. “I’m sorry, Mayaka. That was a shallow question. It’s only on my mind because—well—hm, how to say this…” 

Mayaka lifts her head from her knees to frown up at him. He’s leaning back against the wall; his scarf obscures his mouth. His gaze is not on her, but on the dusty hose at rest on a hook by the door. 

“ _The Pain of Spring_ ,” he says, and Mayaka’s heart jumps to her palate. “In Cocohana. Is that one yours?” 

Mayaka knows that a sound—any sound—would save her, but she can’t put one together for the life of her. She opens and closes her mouth soundlessly like some stupid suffocating fish. 

“How—” It trips through her defenses, an exposed nerve. “How did you know that?” 

The line of Satoshi’s mouth, though it moves upwards, seems to haunt his face. He bows his head to gaze down at her, keeping it where she can see, and Mayaka wants to look away, as she would from a wound. 

“I knew it right away,” he says quietly, in a tone he’d used to laugh at himself. “From the first page. You’re easier to know than you think, Mayaka. Or maybe that’s just another of my silly talents.” 

* * *

“Chii-chan,” Mayaka sobs into Chitanda’s shoulder, with such strength that her whole body feels like it might break around it, “Chii-chan, Chii-chan, why does it feel like this?” 

They’re in Chitanda’s room, on Chitanda’s floor, and an hour ago Mayaka had said something to Satoshi under the maple tree. Satoshi, who she’s wasted half of her life loving; Satoshi, who never interrupts her when she’s talking. Satoshi, who’s just her friend again now, or whatever half-friend he’s always been; _friend_ if it was a word for a pain the heart couldn’t unlearn. 

Mayaka hasn’t cried this hard in years. 

She wipes some of her snot on the tissue that Chitanda gently passes her, wads it up, and throws it onto the floor to join the others. Her eyes are so tired out from the crying that she can barely keep them open, but still tears manage to leak through, big fat Ghibli ones, rolling down into her lap. 

“Let it feel how it feels, Mayaka-san,” Chitanda says, petting the back of Mayaka’s head.

“I don’t want to feel _anything_ ,” Mayaka says with a hiccup. “I’m tired of feeling things. I just…” She buries her face in Chitanda’s shirt. “I don’t get it. I don’t get it. If I’m the one who wanted it, then… then wh-why am I crying?” 

She doesn’t expect an answer from Chitanda—the one she’s really talking to is herself, accusingly, helplessly; utterly at a loss. 

“Maybe you didn’t want it, Mayaka-san,” Chitanda says to her. “Maybe you didn’t want it at all. Could that be the problem?” 

When did she get so insightful? It sounds like the kind of thing that Oreki would say. 

Mayaka screws her face up until her eyes are shut tight. It hurts her head, but she holds to it with all the strength she has. 

She doesn’t know what she wants or doesn’t want. What she knows is that it had felt, for a moment, under the maple tree, like being with Satoshi would hurt just as much as not being with him. What she knows is that it had felt like she was doing him a kindness before it had felt like anything else. 

“I’m sorry,” Chitanda whispers.

When Mayaka opens her eyes again, she sees that Chitanda’s are glistening, and that she’s biting her lip. Chitanda has a habit of crying when she sees other people doing it. Mayaka immediately throws her arms around her neck and hugs her. 

“Chii-chan, don’t cry! You don’t have to be sorry! _I’m_ sorry!”

“No!” Chitanda exclaims, squeezing her so hard that for a second Mayaka feels like her eyes might pop out. “It wasn’t fair of me to behave as though you made a mistake, or like I understand your feelings better than you do… that was a selfish thing of me to say, Mayaka-san, please pay it no mind!” 

Mayaka manages to wriggle out of her friend’s grasp to look at her head-on, cupping her face in both hands. Chitanda’s cheeks are so round that they squish a little. Her eyes are a little red at the rims, but fierce and determined. 

“If you’d like me to hate Fukube-san,” she declares, pumping her fists in the air for emphasis, “just say the word. I won’t forgive him.” 

Mayaka blinks back at her and then breaks into a wet, wobbly laugh. Chitanda couldn’t sell hatred if it was the last resource on earth. 

“I don’t want you to hate Fuku-chan,” she burbles, and lets go, wiping messily at her nose with her sleeve. “I don’t even think _I_ hate him. That’s the worst part.” 

Chitanda pulls a tissue from the pink box and dabs at her eyes, lets out one sniffle, and then sets her hands in her lap. 

“Mayaka-san,” she says, “I’m—I’m not good with words like you… I’m _not_ ,” she gently insists when Mayaka opens her mouth to protest, “so I don’t really know how to say this… but—you don’t ever have to write yourself an ending for someone else’s sake.” 

She reaches across their laps and sets her palm on Mayaka’s knuckles. Mayaka should blow her nose, but she can’t muster the strength. In less than four months she’ll be on a train to Tokyo, with all of her belongings in one suitcase, and she’ll have more to think about than Fukube Satoshi and the ending she had given him. 

“Only you decide,” she says in that light and elegant Chitanda way, so clearly enunciated, so kind. “Just remember that.” 

* * *

“We should call for help,” Mayaka says through her chattering teeth. 

“But everyone’s asleep,” Satoshi says. “And Houtarou and Chitanda-san are all the way back at the shrine. There’s no way they’d hear us.” 

“I can be loud,” Mayaka grits out. “I can scream until they hear me in Takamagahara.” 

Satoshi chuckles a little at that, but it’s wan, as though the frost is now encroaching on it, too. He had squatted down beside Mayaka a while earlier and then lowered himself into a sitting position, wrapping his arms snugly around his knees. 

He’d given her his jacket, too. Mayaka is still crouching, but she has the jacket wrapped around her like a cape, holding the front closed in each hand. Satoshi’s just got his scarf and mittens now. 

“You’re not worried about what they might think?” he whispers. 

Mayaka’s gut twists up like someone’s wringing the water out of it. She glances unconsciously at Satoshi’s raw pink lips, barely parted in the cold, and at the place where his neck begins, beneath which she knows his pulse is beating away. Want—the lonely, barren memory of it—twinges warm between her legs, just for a moment. 

“What they might think?” she retorts with a scoff, but her voice is a little more shrill than she plans. “Please, Fuku-chan. That I got locked in here because some idiot took too long to find the charcoal?” 

Satoshi lets out a short breath, rendered a laugh by the smile. “Sorry. Maybe I’m overthinking it.” 

“You?” Mayaka says acidly. 

Satoshi doesn’t laugh at that. He turns his head; Mayaka doesn’t turn hers in kind to meet whatever look he’s giving her. She’s had her heart broken by plenty of those stupid looks. 

He’s quiet for a long time afterwards, eventually shifting his head away again. Mayaka nestles herself further into his jacket as best she can. Some of his warmth is still in the lining, though it’s begun to fade. She subtly closes her eyes, breathes in through her nose—it smells like him, too. 

“It’s good, you know,” Satoshi whispers. 

“What is?” 

“ _The Pain of Spring_ ,” Satoshi replies, blowing out with a shiver. “It’s the kind of story that… that only you could tell. And I can’t stop thinking how beautiful that is.” His voice pitches low. “Do you know what I mean?” 

If Mayaka’s tears weren’t frozen inside of her, she has a feeling they’d come out for that. 

“No,” she says sharply. Driven equally by panic and anger, she rises swiftly to stand, clutching the jacket to keep it from falling. “You’re not making any sense. And talking isn’t keeping us warm anymore. We have to find a way out of here, Fuku-chan, all right? Pull yourself together.” 

“Right,” Satoshi murmurs, as if in a daze. “You’re right. Sorry, Mayaka. Sorry.” 

* * *

“You’re what?” Mayaka says, in a voice so quiet that even she nearly doesn’t hear it. 

The leaves of the maple tree by the side of the road to school have almost all gone red, though some half-green ones remain near the top, where the sun is strongest. Only a moment ago, she had been holding Satoshi’s hand in hers, but now her fingers hang limp at her sides, stung by the autumn wind. 

“Not leaving Kamiyama,” he repeats. It’s their third year, and his hair is longer than it’s ever been. Mayaka has gotten into the habit of brushing it back, holding it at his forehead and beaming up at his face, as if she’s alighted on some grand secret. “I think it’ll be best if I stay here and attend the community college.” 

“Why?” Mayaka blurts out. 

She can’t be sure, but she thinks she sees hurt flash across his face for an instant, before it’s schooled back into the usual pleasant pretense. 

“Because I want to,” he says. “Besides, I’ll need to save the money anyway, and I’d be able to do it better here than I would paying rent in Tokyo—”

Mayaka feels sick. Hadn’t the two of them talked about going to Tokyo University together? Hadn’t they talked about where they might fit a futon, what classes they might take? Hadn’t Satoshi spoken after dark in her room about programs in Data Science, and his dream of working in the Metropolitan Library, and how badly he wanted to see Meiji Jingu? Hadn’t they—

“That way, when you come back,” he says softly, “I’ll have plenty to get us started.” 

Whatever else he’s said, those words crash through Mayaka like a stone through a window. It’s all she can do not to stumble backwards. 

“What? _What_? Fuku-chan,” she says, with a tremor, “that’s—you’re not holding yourself back, are you?” 

Satoshi frowns, and at last, at _last_ , the smile disappears. 

“Holding myself back?” he repeats. “Not at all. I just said I—”

“We shouldn’t go out anymore,” Mayaka says, right there, under the maple tree, with all of its dead and beautiful leaves. “We—that’s not—I don’t—I don’t want to.”

Satoshi stares back at her, absolutely silent. There’s no trace of an emotion on his face except for a vague registration of shock; the faintly arched eyebrows, the faintly wide eyes, as though the impact has not yet reached his vitals. It tears her asunder. 

“What?” he whispers. 

Mayaka takes a stumbling step back, gripping the strap of her bag with both hands. She hates Satoshi, right then. All of that talk of overcoming the fears that had paralyzed him; all that talk of _trying_ —and now this? It isn’t the Satoshi she knows. It isn’t a Satoshi she’s known since her Valentine’s chocolate had been broken into pieces. 

“You’re just the same,” she chokes out, and then breaks into a shout. “You’re _just the same_ , Fuku-chan!”

She takes off running down the block, and Satoshi doesn’t call after her or try to follow. The tears reach her with a significant delay—it isn’t until she’s streets away that they come, and then they’re gushing out of her, and they don’t abate even when she reaches the door of Chitanda’s house, way out past the rice fields, with two blisters on her ankles. 

* * *

“I still love you,” Satoshi says with the airy confidence of someone discussing the weather, at the same time that Mayaka gasps, “I think we can unscrew the hinges!” 

She’s standing on her tiptoes with one hand on the topmost hinge, which is made of thick and rusted metal, feeling around with her finger until it lands on the groove of the screw. It’s just one line, for a flathead. 

Satoshi’s still sitting by the shelves where she’d left him. 

She turns distractedly, having only half-heard him. “What?” 

“Nothing,” Satoshi says, and clambers to his feet with a sigh. “We can unscrew the hinges, you said? I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.” 

He speaks the last sentence in a familiar, defeated way, as if the not thinking of it has bested him too many times to count. When he shuffles over to stand beside Mayaka by the door, with the single shred of light between them, he does it with a sigh. 

“Well, we’re in a tool shed,” he says. “You’d think there’d be a screwdriver, right? But there isn’t. I checked everywhere.” 

“Or a yen coin,” Mayaka says breathlessly. “Do you have one? I left my purse back at the shrine.” 

Satoshi looks at her with a fierce and incandescent wonder. Mayaka has never been looked at that way in her life. 

“Sometime in the next century, Fuku-chan.” 

“Right.” Satoshi pats himself for his jeans’ back pockets and then fishes around in one of them, producing a coin purse that looks handmade. “I should have plenty.” 

He pulls the mitten of his free hand off with his teeth, and it dangles from his mouth, a garish blue. When he produces a shiny 100-yen coin, he extends it to Mayaka and drops it into her palm. Mayaka murmurs her thanks and turns resolutely back to the door. 

She’s able to undo the bottom hinge, but the upper one is too high for her to reach. She tries to several times, huffing with effort. 

“Here, let me,” Satoshi says, in a way that is not a command but an offering, and the only way she knows how to accept. 

Wordlessly, she passes him the coin and steps aside. It’s only then that it registers with her how much taller the years have made him—his arms lift to the hinge without straining in the slightest. At his full height, he almost towers over her. 

“Almost there,” he mutters, and lets out a quiet grunt, eyebrows furrowing. “Who screwed this in so tight? Come on… come on—” Mayaka hears a click. “Got it!” 

He drops back onto his heels with a satisfied sigh, pocketing the screw and coin. 

“It should give now, no problem,” he says brightly, and when he spins around to face her again his face is flushed, and his smile—luminous, beloved to her. Not hollow. “Great thinking, Mayaka!” 

“Fuku-chan,” Mayaka’s voice says. 

She blinks, lifting her fingers to her mouth. Where had that come from? 

“Fuku-chan,” she tries again, “do you… do you ever wish you could do things over?” 

“Mm,” Satoshi thoughtfully answers, his eyelids falling low. He is not looking at Mayaka, but rather the patch of earth between her and him, the distance. “It depends on the thing. If we could do anything over, whenever we wanted… would we ever really learn anything?” 

Mayaka’s heart is a small and tender thing, aching and aching and aching, like a bruise that’s been pressed too many times. 

“I think we can learn from things and still fix them,” she says, and takes a step closer. “I mean… would we want to learn anything at all, if that’s how we have to do it? By breaking things?” 

“This is a very interesting thought experiment.” 

“Fuku-chan, come on,” Mayaka implores him, and despite the exasperation she’s sure he can hear the pain in it, the hope in it. 

With little resistance, Satoshi lifts his eyes until they meet hers. She almost loses her nerve. 

“You could have called me,” she says, shivering in Satoshi’s coat, in the shed, in the dark, at the advent of another year. 

“I could have,” Satoshi admits. “I should have. I wanted to.” 

“Then why didn’t you?” 

“Mayaka,” Satoshi says, pained. “Would you have picked up? I mean, really.” 

Mayaka considers the question and sighs. “Probably not. But…” _Just to see your name_ , she thinks. _Just to think of you, in our hometown, thinking of me._

“Would you have called me,” she asks, “if you could do it over?” 

Satoshi stares back at her, unblinking. 

“Yes,” he says. 

Mayaka takes the last step, until they’re close enough that another would yield a touch. Satoshi’s mouth opens, just a centimeter, maybe less. Just enough that a word could fit there—the one perfect word. 

“I would have picked up,” she whispers. “If I could do it over. If I could do it over, I… I would’ve said, ‘I’ll save up, too, Fuku-chan.’ I would’ve said… I would’ve said—I wouldn’t have acted like your dream must’ve been settling for something, just because I didn’t think it was big enough back then.” 

“It was big, Mayaka,” Satoshi says, and then, maybe the truest thing that he has ever told her, pressed bare and bleeding into her hands, underpinned by a smile: “It was the biggest dream I ever had.” 

Mayaka’s stomach plunges. Her eyes rush to Satoshi’s mouth, and then to his eyes, a question. Satoshi’s soft mitten cups her right cheek, tentatively at first, and then she grasps his wrist and brings it closer. 

She tightens her fingers, pressing the joints to the bone. 

“You could stand to dream a little bigger than me, Fuku-chan.” 

Fukube Satoshi, who had eaten every broken piece of her chocolate meticulously, who had walked home with her so many times, shakes his head and says, with a quiet conviction, “I’ve given it a try, Mayaka. I’ve decided that I just can’t.” 

Mayaka doesn’t kiss him so much as she falls on him, with one hand still gripping his wrist and the other fisted into his sweater. Satoshi’s mouth is perfectly familiar against hers, down to its movements and its wants. It feels like coming home at the end of the day, and opening the door. 

* * *

They return to the shrine, where Chitanda and Oreki are in the middle of buttoning up their coats to go on a search for them both, shivering themselves senseless. 

“You’re alive,” Oreki deadpans, and immediately gets to work unbuttoning his coat again. “Did you bring the charcoal?” 

**Author's Note:**

> [♫](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwXZ3jWqjJ8)


End file.
